--- title: PyEnchant | Provider Shootout ---

PyEnchant Provider Shootout

The PyEnchant source distribution contains the script "tools\shootout.py", which can be used to run a comparative test between the different providers available in an enchant installation. The idea is loosely based on the aspell comparison tests run by Kevin Atkinson (http://aspell.net/test/) and used the test data that he provides, but the code is pure Python and written from scratch.

The following table summarises results from three spellchecking providers, all using PyEnchant 1.1.0 and Enchant 1.1.5:

ProviderEXISTEDSUGGESTEDFIRSTFIRST5FIRST10AVG DIST
aspell97.987.250.077.684.41.77
ispell99.853.434.050.651.71.10
myspell99.269.545.964.168.81.06

The statistics were collected on test data containing over 500 words and express the following quantities:

On the basis of this data, the default provider for the stand-alone Windows distribution was changed from ispell to myspell for version 1.1.0. The two have similar language coverage and quality of suggestions (EXISTED and AVG DIST respectively) but myspell has a significantly better ability to guess the intended spelling of a word (SUGGESTED).